


try as I might I couldn't bring myself to hold you

by Dialuci



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Dialuci have a child via the same weird magic that made satan, Diavolo is missing for most of the fic and shut up is why, Family Feels, Gen, M/M, Satan gets cursed into being a toddler again, literally tho family feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23108506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialuci/pseuds/Dialuci
Summary: All of this for an ask I received on tumblr:"If we may continue talking about the Baby and Satan situation; what if Satan is hit with a hex or smth that turns him into a child and now Lucifer is torn between his love for his child created out of his pride and joy, and the little babe that despite being made of his wrath, holds an important place in his heart? I really just need A comfort thing where Satan realizes Lucifer still cares for him and Lucifer to realize that Satan is still important to him in this essay I will—"NO anon, in this essayIWill--
Relationships: Diavolo/Lucifer (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Lucifer & Satan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 308





	try as I might I couldn't bring myself to hold you

**Author's Note:**

> _On some level I think I always understood  
>  That these hands of mine were clumsy, not clever  
> And I tried to do the best that I could  
> But **try as I might I couldn't bring myself to hold you**_
> 
> _It’s a secret I keep tucked inside my chest  
>  With this heart of mine that's guilty not remorseful  
> There is love that doesn't have a place to rest  
> But it would have buried you if it had settled on your shoulders_
> 
> _On some level I think I always understood  
>  That a ship could never really love an anchor  
> So I did the only thing that I could  
> And severed the rope to set you sailing from my harbor_
> 
> _There are times where I still wonder about you  
>  You are someone I have loved but never known  
> And you’ll never see the reasons I had  
> For keeping my claws away when they were close enough to hurt you_
> 
> _I am selfish, I am broken, I am cruel  
>  I am all the things they might have said to you  
> Do you ever think of me and my two hands  
> And wondered why they never soothed your fevers  
> And wondered why they never tied your shoes  
> And wondered why they never held you gently  
> And wondered why they never had the chance to lose you?_
> 
> Never Love an Anchor - The Crane Wives

Lucifer has only just successfully put Agares down for their afternoon nap--and what a sweet picture his child makes, curled up in their blankets and sucking their thumb. Truly, has there ever been a more perfect toddler?--but still _someone_ finds it appropriate to start frantically knocking on the nursery door, as if the noise isn’t at risk of waking them.

Whoever is on the other side of the door better either be Diavolo himself or else have a truly _immaculate_ reason for putting Lucifer’s child’s sleep at risk, or they are going to learn that there are some fates so much worse than simple death.

He’s at the entry way within four long strides, wrenching the door open with as much force as he can get away with without making an even louder ruckus than the knocking itself.

Mammon, a shade paler than usual, gives him a shaky grin. “Uh-- _hey_ Bro, so, okay, I know you’re busy with Aggie--” His voice comes out as a false whisper, hushed but barely. At the very least he’s got the good sense to speak quietly.

“ _Mammon,_ ” Lucifer’s smile cuts its way across his face, thin and pointed as a stiletto, his words laced heavy with his oldest little brother’s impending demise. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Well, okay-- alright, bad timing, I totally get it!” Mammon flinches back just a touch and throws his hands up in defense, as if that would do anything to impede Lucifer once he’s on the warpath. “But this is really serious, okay? And _totally_ not my fault! Focus on that part: this is completely not my fault, alright? Mammon didn’t have a hand in _any_ of this mess--”

Lucifer raises a hand in a bid for silence and Mammon’s jaw audibly clicks shut. He draws a long breath in through his nose and shuts the door behind him and attempts to exhale his perhaps frankly over-reactive frustration away. It’s only marginally successful.

Almost compulsively, Lucifer checks his hip for the baby monitor that Barbatos had so thoughtfully bought the same day that Agares had graced the world with their presence only a couple of years ago now. The baby monitor is clipped to his belt the same as it was five minutes ago. He should be alright to leave Agares alone for an hour or so. Most likely enough time to clean up whatever mess--or delegate the task to someone else--his family has managed to make this time.

Lucifer sighs and tries to ignore the prescient sense that he’s got a headache coming on. “Just get to the point. What happened?”

Mammon bites his lip, and it only occurs to Lucifer then how truly distraught Mammon looks.

“It’s Satan.”

* * *

Whatever Lucifer had imagined could be wrong with Satan, this had been the furthest thing from Lucifer’s mind.

In the middle of Belphegor and Beelzebub’s room sits a child no older than four years of age, fair hair falling slightly into his face while he studiously turns the pages of a brightly colored comic book. The remainder of their family are arranged on the beds on either side in various states of distress. Asmo and Levi are seated on Beelzebub’s bed while Beel props Belphie up on the other.

Leviathan, on the edge of Beel’s bed, is watching Satan with such rapt, unhappy attention that Lucifer is certain the third born isn’t even aware that Lucifer’s entered the room at all.

Satan the child takes the corner of a page between his little fingers. Leviathan visibly tenses, eyes widening, looking ready to spring into action at any second and snatch the book away. But all Satan does is take a prodigious amount of care and very slowly turns the page. 

Lucifer catches a hint of a smirk on Satan’s face--ah, so the little monster is self aware. Wonderful. 

“What in the nine circles of hell did you lot _do_?” His arms cross automatically over his chest, the disapproving look that settles on his face as natural as breathing. Leviathan startles at the sound of his voice and Lucifer has to struggle a little not to visibly show the humor he finds in it.

Satan doesn’t seem to have the same compunction and giggles a bit meanly, blue green eyes shining and squinted in mirth.

Belphegor similarly snorts a little, though he muffles it when Beelzebub jostles him to mind his manners with a soft _“Belphie, we have to be good examples.”_

Lucifer taps an impatient rhythm against his arm, one eyebrow raised. “Well? Out with it. Why is Satan…. Like this.” He makes a short gesture toward the little demon without looking at him much.

And if it’s because he doesn’t much like the way he feels when he does, then that is his business and his alone.

After some silent side-eyeing and another false alarm from Satan fiddling with the pages of the comic book, Asmo clears his throat delicately.

“So, alright, it went something like this…”

* * *

By the end of Asmodeus’ explanation, Lucifer is left rubbing at his temple in the vain hope that he’ll be able to ward off his budding stress headache. 

“So you’re telling me,” Lucifer says, with mounting annoyance. “That Satan received a cursed book from some witch he slighted… And it turned him into a _toddler?_ ” A short chorus of assent from his various siblings confirms it.

Lucifer sighs. Over the baby monitor, he hears Agares start to stir-- the first plaintive sounds of awakening filtering in over the speakers. He finally lets his gaze linger on Satan, who is at the present time not so much older than Agares.

Satan looks up at him and starts to pout, lifting his arms in a bid to be held. “Up!”

With an eye roll, Lucifer complies.

“The rest of you are to figure out how to undo this curse,” Lucifer settles Satan on his left hip and knows without looking that Satan is mimicking his imperious expression. “While I look after Satan. If this takes more than a week…”

Lucifer pauses.

“Well... Best we don't find out, hm?”

A second more dejected chorus of groans and protests follows Lucifer as he carries Satan out of the room.

* * *

Satan hiccups in his arms, coming down from yet another round of anger fueled tears. Lucifer hadn’t missed this part of Satan’s childhood-- at least when he’d gotten older he’d traded out the temper tantrums for scathing words, which are all things considered, much easier for Lucifer to handle.

Lucifer shifts Satan on his hip with a sigh, which Satan must take as warning he’s about to be set down if the way his chubby hands take hold of Lucifer’s shirtfront in a death grip is anything to go by.

“NO!!” He wails, and there he goes, starting up on the inconsolable sobbing again. Lucifer tucks Satan closer and picks back up on the song he’d been humming before--the song he used to hum to Satan before, the song that he sang to _all_ of his siblings in their juvenile years.

“Hush, hush now, I’m here. Don’t fret, little one…”

Agares watches the pair of them from their crib with wide orange eyes, crocodile plush wedged between their chubby body and the bars. So far they’ve been content to do little more than watch, for which Lucifer is grateful.

Of course Satan is cursed into a toddler’s form during the _one_ week of the year that Diavolo is needed to make his rounds on the outer reaches of the kingdom. When has he ever done anything other than strive to make Lucifer’s life as difficult as possible?

“I don’t WANNA,” Satan cries, thrashing a bit in Lucifer’s grip. “I don’t _WANNA_ share!! No!!”

With startling clarity, it occurs to Lucifer what Satan has been persistently crying over for the past half hour.

Something in his heart twists, breaks a little. Ah…

Lucifer’s melody falters. “There is enough of me for the both of you,” He rubs Satan’s small back and recalls distant days of when it truly was only the two of them together and tries to pick the song back up again.

“I promise, it’s alright.”

* * *

Agares is about as easy of a child to handle as Satan is not, for which Lucifer will be forever thankful. Once Satan had settled earlier they hadn’t complained at all about sharing Lucifer’s arms with a strange new child, only asking after the newcomer’s name and then trying to touch Satan’s face.

Certainly their fearless attitude, the way they carry themself with the certainty that the universe will tie itself into knots at their leisure, that all comes from Diavolo. Most days Lucifer finds it endearing, but when it brings his child’s delicate fingers upsettingly close to the death trap that is Satan’s maw, well, he can’t help but curse his husband just a little.

Satan had swatted Agares’ hand away with a pouting sort of vehemence, and where Lucifer had expected Agares to cry or take offense… Something else happened.

Apparently rejection inciting a weird sort of ambition _also_ runs in Diavolo’s side of the family, because now Agares is hell bent on making friends with his new playmate to the same extent that Satan most definitely is uninterested. Or at least he makes a very good show of acting like he isn’t.

At the very least the two are able to entertain each other on the nursery floor while Lucifer takes a short break with Barbatos--truly the other demon is a gift. He’d arrived with a full tea service unprompted just at the right moment.

Lucifer takes a sip from his teacup and watches Agares offer Satan a building block. “Come play blocks?” They suggest hopefully. Satan sniffs in disdain and goes back to angrily staring at the wall.

Agares pouts but puts the block down beside Satan regardless. Then finds another and places it next to the first, continuing this trend until a small wall begins to form.

Barbatos chuckles softly behind a hand from the seat Lucifer had bullied him into on his right. Lucifer raises a single brow in his direction.

Barbatos’ mellow smile is turned on him, but Lucifer would be hard pressed not to notice the deeply amused glint in his eyes. “Ah, I beg your pardon,” Barbatos raises his own cup to his lips but pauses. “This is just rather nostalgic for me to watch.”

“Nostalgic,” Lucifer asks and receives a thoughtful hum in reply. “How so?”

Barbatos seems to mull the question over for a while, letting relative peace fall over them as Agares stacks blocks higher and higher in what appears to now be an attempt to catch Satan’s interest, or at the very least his attention, although the slightly older child remains resolute in his pouting.

“Well...” There’s a laugh hidden in Barbatos’ words, but what it’s aimed at Lucifer can’t quite figure out.

Agares’ wall-tower structure slowly becomes of a height enough to make it difficult for the toddler to stack any more blocks. Lucifer watches on as realization dawns on his child, and then, they seem to resolve the situation internally as they toddle off to dig around for another toy.

As soon as Agares’ absence registers with Satan, he turns his head just so to try and find the younger demon in his periphery.

Agares settles on a soft-quilted ball with no small amount of satisfaction, re-approaching Satan with the air of someone who’s solved the world’s problems.

“Satan,” They say, holding up the ball in both hands. “Catch!” 

The ball is lobbed straight at Satan’s face.

Satan most emphatically _does not_ catch it.

With an unholy screech, Satan shoots up and attacks the nearest thing--Agares’ block structure, which he begins demolishing with a viciousness that no small child should be able to conjure. Lucifer has half risen out of his seat in concern but stops short when he catches the smug look on Agares’ face.

Slowly, Lucifer lowers himself back down. What a clever child-- they’d gotten Satan to play with them after all.

“Scone?” Barbatos offers to one side. Lucifer nods, distractedly.

Nostalgic indeed.

After a long afternoon spent building and destroying towers of blocks, Agares and Satan both submit--with varying degrees of ease, of course--to dinner and a bath before bed.

Lucifer stands in the doorway to the nursery with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, watching the two thoroughly cleaned and well fed children settle and drift off to sleep. Satan hadn’t wanted to sleep in the crib--but Agares had kicked up such a fuss about the whole thing that even the pint sized Cardinal sin of Wrath had relented and submitted to spending the night with his….

Well, Lucifer supposes they _are_ siblings. Even more so than Satan is with any of the others-- cut from the same cloth, as it were.

Lucifer thumbs over an old, circular scar that runs from the knuckle of his index finger over the joint of his thumb--a gift from the first time that Satan had well and truly bitten him, millennia ago--and finds himself lost in thought, watching the physical manifestations of his fury and his love curl into each other in the same bed.

He leaves the nursery with the baby monitor attached to his hip and climbs into his own bed, alone with himself for the first time in a very, very long time.

Lucifer lies awake and wonders about that, watching the shadows chase themselves across his bedroom ceiling.

* * *

It takes six days for Lucifer’s siblings to produce an antidote for Satan’s condition, although Lucifer hesitates to administer it.

After the first day, Agares and Satan had become nearly attached at the hip. Agares began to go out of their way to share _everything_ with Satan, from their toys, to places they liked in the castle, down to their own food at meal times. Whether this behavior in them is the product of Agares not having many suitable playmates their own age or something more… innate, Lucifer couldn’t say, but at least it wasn’t too unexpected considering his child’s general demeanor.

What Lucifer hadn’t expected was for Satan to take to Agares in turn-- tolerating their chatter, allowing himself to be led around, more or less indulging in whatever silly thing Agares wanted to do with him next… Satan had never been a compliant child the first time that Lucifer raised him, and had more or less detested all of his family members at this age, even sweet little Lilith.

Or, Lucifer wonders now, perhaps he’d only wanted something he didn’t know to ask for.

Being loved… being wanted… Lucifer cannot pretend that he’d been a particularly good parental figure to Satan, not when he’d insisted upon Satan not be considered his child at all, but another brother instead.

Just how much of Satan’s combative spitefulness is his nature, and how much of it was taught?

Lucifer sighs from the rocking chair in Agares’ nursery, watching Satan and Agares attempt to collaborate on a crayon drawing. On the one hand, he ought to get it over with and give Satan the curse’s antidote. He has responsibilities to attend to, friends he’s left hanging, projects unfinished… An entire adult life waiting for him, in fact.

But…. What is this if not another chance for Satan to have a better childhood? What is this if not a chance for Lucifer himself to do better by the child he had never meant to have?

Is that selfish of him? Is it right?

Do those things really matter?

“Daddy!” Agares beams and shouts for him while Satan holds up their jointly created crayon monstrosity with pride. “It’s us.” Satan chimes in, then cocks his head and grins.

Lucifer rolls the vial in his palm, contemplative, then pockets it.

He’ll decide tomorrow morning. Right now he has a drawing--and two children besides--to praise.

* * *

The bed dips with a familiar weight around three in the morning, followed by a familiar chest pressed up against his back, and an even more familiar pair of lips pressing a kiss to the space beneath Lucifer’s ear. It’s just enough to draw Lucifer back to groggy awareness. He turns his head and meets Diavolo’s lips in an uncoordinated kiss.

“Welcome home.” He murmurs. Diavolo hums into the kiss before pulling aware, and Lucifer’s heart lights up in adoration as wakefulness fully registers for him. “You’re home early?” 

“You know I can’t stay away from you for long.” Diavolo chuckles while manhandling Lucifer into a closer, more comfortable position. Lucifer snorts an inelegant laugh through his nose but doesn’t protest--and why would he? Is he not perfectly content to be exactly where he is?

“Go to sleep, Diavolo.” 

Another laugh, a kiss to the back of Lucifer’s head. “Yes, dear.”

Morning comes as it usually does these days. Lucifer’s alarm goes off, and then he spends the next fifteen minutes half-heartedly attempting to inspire the strength necessary within himself to escape from the warm, comfortable circle of his sleeping husband’s embrace.

Eventually he manages to get out of bed, if only for the fact that Agares, and now Satan as well, need tending to.

On his way to the nursery, Lucifer goes back over how the hell he’s going to explain the situation to Diavolo. _“Well you see darling, Satan got himself cursed and the result is a second chance at childhood, and I simply thought Agares could use a brother. What do you say, can we keep him?”_

Lucifer shakes his head as if to clear it of his last thought, internally cringing. He’ll think of something better, but for now, he has two little ones to check on.

He opens the door to the nursery and stares, uncomprehending, at the empty crib he’s face with. A thousand panicked ideas race through his mind at once--they’ve both been kidnapped as some sort of rebellious scheme against Diavolo’s rule, Agares wanted a snack in the night and they snuck out and fell asleep somewhere else, they wandered off together and now they’re _lost_ and why didn’t Lucifer keep a better eye on them--until he turns his head toward the corner of the room where the rocking chair sits.

Slowly rocking back and forth sits Satan as the adult he truly is, with an unreadable smile quirked on his lips and Agares fast asleep in his lap. Satan raises a finger to his lips just as Lucifer attempts the beginning of several questions, asking for silence instead with a small gesture down at Agares. Lucifer glances from one child’s face to the other and acquiesces.

* * *

The door to the nursery shuts with a soft _click_. 

“Sorry for the scare,” Satan says, casual as anything. As if he hadn’t just spent a week as a four year old child, or perhaps as if spending a week as a toddler is simply just another week for him. “The curse wore off in my sleep--it only lasts about seven days at best. Agares sleeps like a rock, but wouldn’t let go of me.” He shrugs helplessly and then stuffs his hands into his pockets. 

Ah. Yet another thing Agares takes after Diavolo in.

Lucifer can practically feel his heart rate steadily slow into a more normal rhythm. “It’s understandable.” Is what he manages to get out, though he still sounds a bit too stunned to his own ear for comfort.

“They’re a surprisingly good kid.” Satan says as he leans back against the wall, doubtless because he has more to say-- Lucifer internally braces for whatever it might be. Satan draws in a breath, a complicated expression smothering out his usual impenetrable smile. “Lucifer...”

Here it comes, the start of the acerbic rapport that they’ve had for thousands of years. Lucifer tenses, shores up his defenses.

And then:

“...You weren’t going to use the curse breaker, were you.” The lack of accusation or venom in his statement throws Lucifer more for a loop than the contents of his words. 

If Lucifer didn’t know better, he would think that Satan sounded…. Genuinely confused.

“How did you…?”

Satan gives a half shrug, one shoulder rising and dropping in a quick, jerky motion. “Just because I was a child didn’t mean I couldn't hear you. You had the antidote, but you didn’t give it to me.”

For that, Lucifer has no rebuttal. But for once, it doesn’t seem like Satan is trying to press for a fight. Silence falls between them for a beat, then two.

“...I was taking my time in weighing my options. I did not do very well by you, to begin with.” 

Satan’s wandering gaze snaps back to Lucifer with a speed that leaves Lucifer waiting for that empty little smile to mask his expression once more. 

It doesn’t come.

“Be that as it may,” Satan concedes, and if there’s thoughtful awe in his voice Lucifer chooses not to hear it. He pushes off from his slouch against the wall. “...I think that’s enough Father-Son bonding for one century, don’t you?”

Satan flashes Lucifer the most genuine smile he’s seen on him after he’d reached adolescence. “I’ll see you around.”

Lucifer lets him go with that--allows Satan that last word, even, and simply watches his child leave.

He pushes a hand back through his hair, unable to keep a smile of his own off his face any longer. “‘Father-Son’ bonding, huh?”

Perhaps they can have a second chance, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me for doing this at [canonlucidia](https://canonlucidia.tumblr.com/)


End file.
